The Playtester

They made a game. You are the playtester.

Somewhere, aliens who call themselves 0 Time are making video games. They are not good at it yet. That is what you are for.

You wake up in a small cell. On the desk: a PC. On the wall: a vending machine that drops cartridges one at a time, a screen listing 0Time's game library, and a panel with your shift number, a performance meter and your points. Behind the glass above the desk, three shapes are watching. Take the cartridge, push it into the PC, and lean into the screen.

One room. Eight games. No second chances.

Every cartridge is a short 2D game in the aliens' house style: a platformer, a falling-block plating puzzle, a target range, a memory game, a dungeon crawl, their idea of blackjack, a conveyor belt that needs sorting, and a worm. You start with two. They release another one every time a human dies. Finish a game and you are paid. Fail one and it goes on the played pile with a FAILED sticker. It is never retried.

• Every failure sinks your performance meter, from green to orange to red. Let it bottom out and the panel reads SUBJECT REJECTED. Gas comes out of the vent.

• Your points survive you. When you die they are paid out as store credit for the next human.

• The next human wakes up in the same cell, with everything you bought still in it, and a fresh tally mark on the wall.

Tell them it's not fun. They'll make it harder.

DID YOU FIND THIS GAME FUN, HUMAN? Vote NOT FUN and 0Time hears "too easy": that game gets a new build, faster and meaner. Push a game far enough and its cartridges start shipping with "features": a dark screen, inverted colours, dead pixels, a flickering picture. They are worth more points. They are also a lot harder to play.

Furnish the cell. Change the games.

0Time's requisition terminal sells furniture for store credit, and every piece changes a game: a better bed makes you jump higher in the platformer, a wall clock stretches every timer, a desk lamp adds a hint to every game, and an incinerator burns one cartridge a shift so you never have to play it.

From shift five, someone next door starts talking through a vent in the wall. He sells one thing a shift, for this human's points: wire cutters, a signal jammer, a bootleg autopilot, a plant with very big leaves. Don't ask how he got them.

Not everything in the levels is for playtesting.

Look around the levels carefully and you will find things that were not meant for playtesting. Cut enough of them and the aliens start to notice. Cut a few more, and the cell door opens.

Features

• A first-person cell that is the whole game: desk, bed, vent, vending machine, requisition terminal, and the entities behind the glass.

• A seamless dive from the room into the screen and back, with no loading and no cuts. Skip it when you are in a hurry.

• Eight minigame genres, each with its own difficulty level that only your NOT FUN votes can raise, plus cartridge mutations worth extra points.

• Ten room upgrades from 0Time's terminal and a rotating black-market offer from next door, kept for every human after you.

• Performance, points, sabotage and suspicion: four readings that decide whether tonight is a sleep or a gas.

• An ending you have to earn, and a reason to start the next run knowing what you know.

• Four save slots, keyboard and controller rebinding, Steam Input, and a run you can quit and resume any time.